


Star Maps

by saltyynoodles



Category: Dunkirk (2017)
Genre: M/M, Post-Traumatic Stress Disorder - PTSD, Somebody Lives/Not Everyone Dies
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2018-04-30
Updated: 2018-04-30
Packaged: 2019-04-30 01:42:35
Rating: Not Rated
Warnings: Creator Chose Not To Use Archive Warnings
Chapters: 1
Words: 543
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/14486055
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/saltyynoodles/pseuds/saltyynoodles
Summary: He traces designs like maps on Tommy’s hip, quiet breaths taking up the night, drawing all the words he doesn’t speak. All the words he cannot.





	Star Maps

**Author's Note:**

> I haven't written anything in probably over a year that wasn't a report, but I finally got around to watching Dunkirk and it utterly wrecked my soul. Enjoy a small testament to my pain.
> 
> >> disclaimer: don't own Dunkirk, also, unbeta'ed

Even after they come to England, sometimes the quiet gets to Gibson. It’s all too much like the silence before the storm, the brief pause before the plane’s droning continues and the bombs swoop down like the harbingers of the apocalypse. Nevermind hell, they’d just returned from it.

So, he breathes. His rasping breaths that claw at the silence and fill up the room. It’s as if filling his lungs with oxygen is as painful as not.

Sometimes, the shock will just hit him all over again— the high tide coming back after a brief reprise. He stops in his tracks, heart pounding louder than the spitfires’ engines. His hands shake and it feels as if the water is back around him, the rope around his legs, the salt in his eyes, _in his lungs_ —

Rough hands gently caress his, murky green eyes staring into his own. Through all the messy, messy static clouding Gibson’s mind, a gross mash of French and English and fear, _Tommy_ is the clear skies.

He murmurs, voice cracking, “ _Gibson_.”

It’s simultaneously a greeting and an _are you okay_ and a _I missed you_ , all in one. Because sometimes, they need the silence, to counter the wailing screams just under their skulls.

Gibson squeezes twice, quickly.

* * *

 

He shakes awake in the night, the air dead but for his rattling breaths creating a mourning melody alongside Tommy’s light breathing. He's silent for a moment— the only constant in his life, really. Gibson listens for a moment as his breathing deepens as he awakes. They were never really heavy sleepers after the mole.

Tommy finds his hand, squeezing. His hands aren’t soft— not anymore— but they find a way to make Gibson melt regardless. The bed squeaks slightly as Tommy traces his hand, “can you show me?” he whispers, voice hoarse.

Slowly moving his hand from the other man’s grasp, Gibson hesitantly places his hand on a patch of pale skin that shows. As if touching a holy canvas, he stops for a moment, unsure. Tommy’s green eyes glimmer at him encouragingly through the dark. Gibson complies.

He traces designs like maps on Tommy’s hip, quiet breaths taking up the night, drawing all the words he doesn’t speak. All the words he cannot. He draws planes, the sand, the sky, the men— so many of them— littering the ground like the stars in the sky. Goosebumps rise in the wake of Gibson’s fingers, as he traces out the images, his stories. _Their_ stories.

Sometimes he still just _can’t_ — can’t talk about it, can’t think about it. So he keeps his thoughts safe. _Tommy._  Tommy was safe. He was warm. He was awkward, bony embraces. For Tommy— he opened his mouth for a moment, rasping breaths stealing the voice from his lungs. He tries to ignore the burning shame and Tommy’s understanding gaze. He cannot even say it now, not in English, not in French. He does not want to be silently understood, for once he wants to be able to simply _tell_  Tommy. To fill the quiet with more than pained, broken breathing. To release the static of his mind. 

_Je t’aime. I love you. Je t’aime. I love you. Je t’aime. I love you._

He squeezes Tommy’s hand, twice.


End file.
